On Wednesday, February 20, 2019, President Donald Trump announced his administration would not allow “ISIS Bride” Hoda Muthana, who left Alabama in 2014 to join the Islamic State terrorist organization in Syria, to return to the United States. Muthana’s attorney claims she is a U.S. citizen, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserts otherwise, saying she “has no legal basis to return” to the U.S., according to the New York Times.

The 24-year-old was reportedly born in New Jersey in 1994 while her father was a diplomat from Yemen to the United States. This contradicts Secretary of State Pompeo’s statement in which he claims Muthana is not a U.S. citizen. Muthana has responded to the Trump administration’s refusal to let her re-enter the country through a televised ABC interview. She claims that she attained a passport prior to her initial departure for Turkey in 2014 (immediately after which she found her way to Syria) and that she was born in the United States, automatically granting her citizenship. However, the children of diplomats are not granted birthright citizenship like the average baby born on American soil is. Because diplomats are technically under the jurisdiction of their home countries wherever they happen to be, any of their children are not automatically granted citizenship upon birth.  This appears to be Secretary Pompeo’s basis for his argument, although those representing Mathana claim she was born after her father’s diplomacy ended and the loophole does not apply to her, making her a legal U.S. citizen.

After Mathana joined the Islamic State, she took to Twitter to urge attacks against the West, including America. She reportedly married 3 ISIS fighters, all of whom are now dead, and gave birth to her son, now 18 months old, while in Syria. She escaped ISIS-controlled territory in January of 2019 but remains in a Syrian refugee camp where she awaits her fate – re-entry and trial or a much darker alternative at the hands of the terrorist organization she recruited for and fought with for almost five years.

While she has since renounced her actions and the mission of the Islamic State, according to the Los Angeles Times, many remain skeptical of the “ISIS Bride” and hope the Trump administration blocks her entry into the country.